KEXP Reviews

Sugar Hill Records was the first and most-famed old-school rap label. Rap had been percolating underground in the South Bronx since the mid-70s, but it was Sugar Hill who put it on wax and brought it to a much larger audience, beginning with 1979's "Rapper's Delight." The Sugarhill Gang may have been a prefabricated group that bit the rhymes of the rap underground, but "Rapper's Delight" was enormously influential. Some Sugar Hill monster jams (The Treacherous Three's "Action," The Funky Four + 1's "Rapping and Rocking The House") are curiously missing from this 5-CD set, and it includes some weak joints. Still, it provides an in-depth look at the beginnings of recorded rap. The sinewy grooves heard on the Sugar Hill recordings were provided by the label's ace house band, the core of which was guitarist Skip Alexander (McDonald), bassist Doug Wimbish and drummer Keith LeBlanc. Those three eventually moved on to other notable musical projects, including Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound organization.
2/15/1997
- Don Yates